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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28281798">The Sun Beneath</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/wrabbit/pseuds/wrabbit'>wrabbit</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Terror (TV 2018), The Terror - Dan Simmons</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Caretaking, Episode: s01e06 A Mercy, Gen, Hurt/Comfort</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 22:54:20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,362</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28281798</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/wrabbit/pseuds/wrabbit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Jopson nurses Crozier through withdrawal and the remains of a long night.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Captain Francis Crozier &amp; Thomas Jopson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Sun Beneath</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Various details taken from the novel.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Jopson has never denied his captain anything and Crozier doesn't force him to start. The captain doesn't beg, in the end. He retires to his bunk in agony, and vomits like to expel his soul. He takes water, and the grog, and rejects the food that Jopson offers by the spoonful. </p><p>Together the are as insulated and protected as in a nursery. The captain's moaning turns to fevered mutters and convulsions. The ship creaks and snaps against the ice. The wind screams and whispers and the few men that remain on Terror can be heard passing back and forth and up down the planks. The days are marked by the sound of the bell and dawn is Goodsir's lamp and tap at the door.</p><p>It's dangerous. Jopson is more nervous than he has been in three years yet. The men balance upon a precipice and their expedition leader, to some a sour heir to an idolized man, lies incapacitated in his bunk. </p><p>And Jopson's ears are muffled just as the captain's are closed. He needs a line out, so Goodsir, Peglar, and Hartnell each deliver news as well as tins and supplies. As many toes and two fingers have been lost in seven days between both crews, and Messrs. Tully and Pocock broke up a fight over the use of salt on Erebus. There are rumours that the grog has been modified - some are saying with herbs to protect the men from the Esquimaux witch, or perhaps to pacify the men to make them more susceptible to witches. Mr. Hammond has a complaint of the eye. </p><p>The freeze neither deepens nor abates. The howling dark is the same. There has been no sign of the creature, if it lives. The men call it the devil out of command's earshot. They hypothesize that the ship has rotated in the long night, and that what look to be regular stars are in fact the flickering candles of damned souls, embedded deeper within the earth. Some say liberty lies beneath the ice now. They would like to dig for sea and sunlight. </p><p>Mr. Blanky's spirits are high and his victory over the creature cheers the men. The mast and canvas tenting over Terror is a difficult repair. Lieutenant Irving has been sermonizing again. Someone has stolen a set of dice from Mr. Diggle. He blames Irving and his crusade against idle hands. The cat hasn't been sighted in over two weeks. Some say it's gone with the witch. </p><p>Jopson is relieved to note that Captain Fitzjames is attentive to Lieutenant Little and the Terror. The men chafe and are made busy under his fastidious command, and it distracts them from more insidious things. The captain is said to be ill with malaria. Surprisingly, the witch has not been put forward as a culprit.</p><p>So Jopson monitors the ship even from its blind and deaf heart, and denies the captain's callers. It is not as difficult as he feared it might be, with Captain Fitzjames running the gauntlet and seeing to all things large and small between both ships, from the restoration of their canvas roof to the neatness of the men's personals.</p><p>With the exception of Goodsir, those who do arrive to assist Jopson are not wont to linger. The stench that comes off of Captain Crozier fills the cabin like miasma, so thick that Jopson can taste it on his tongue, in the pockets of his cheeks, in the back of his throat when he swallows. No matter how often Jopson cleans the captain's body with fresh rags, the sickness continuously leaks out of his skin. It's on his breath.</p><p>Jopson is more familiar with the captain's waste than his own as a rule, but when the captain relieves himself now, Jopson's eyes water and he retches. The captain messes his bunk in the depths of his distemper, muddying sheets that are already soaked through with pungent sweat, and Jopson despairs to provide clean, dry bed clothes ever again.</p><p>When he is not tending to the captain in his bunk, Jopson is just outside the door, washing fabrics and taking what dry ones Goodsir can spare. Crozier's mattress and shirt are never less than damp. The condensation freezes around the Illuminator above, only to melt in the lamp of the captain's fever and drip back down into Crozier's lap. Frost roots reveal another another crack and draft in the corner. </p><p>Twice daily Jopson scrapes ice out of the small basin at the captain's beside and refills it with fresh water. Crozier's fever flows in and out like a tide, his eyes flicker and dart on nothing, and at times he raves at whatever spirits plague him. Wherever Crozier goes, it's somewhere Jopson can't follow. So he attends to the captain's muttered dreaming, and warms each of the captain's hands and feet between his palms like a prayer called to by the bells of the watch. </p><p>Dozing there on the stool, with his head resting on the edge of Crozier's bunk, he hears the captain's whistling snores, his grumbles, and groans. And there are also hours in the deep of the night when the entire world is so still that Jopson thinks he can hear the ice ringing like crystal glass. </p><p>The captain resists nothing except most food, the unshaded lamp, and to be stood up. Jopson has touched every part of him now. </p><p>He has been nursing the captain for over a week when Crozier's long delirium finally breaks and his crusted eyes crack open like a kitten's. He watches Jopson clean his arms and legs with a curious line between his brow, now, alert and quiescent in the dim lantern light. </p><p>It is disturbing to fondle the man under his clear-eyed scrutiny, so Jopson reaches for something more familiar. The captain's beard has started to grow in light and soft, like his hair, and Jopson feels out the texture and shape of it automatically before touching his own hair and wetting the rag in the basin. </p><p>Crozier takes his wrist when Jopson reaches up to press the cloth to his face. </p><p>"What day is it?" </p><p>Jopson holds the rag in his lap. "I have no idea," he admits. </p><p>"How many days have I - ?"</p><p>Lifting his hand to Crozier's forehead again, Jopson smoothes back the captain's hairline. "Perhaps twelve days."</p><p>Crozier has regained some color. He is still far too warm in his center and cold in his extremities. His eyelids and the lines of his face tighten in discomfort under the wet cloth before he sighs, and seems to rest. </p><p>"How do the men fare?" Jopson can just make out his voice, ragged and worn thin under the creaking ship, a hush of wind, and beyond that, the ringing abyss.</p><p>He folds the rag, presses it to the captain's cheek, his neck. "They believe the ship has turned upside down to face hell, and that the sun will rise and set beneath the ice." </p><p>Crozier doesn't quite smile and Jopson feels a breath of acknowledgment on the back of his hand. </p><p>"The ship's cat has gone missing. Captain Fitzjames keeps the men on their toes."</p><p>Crozier mumbles something about needing rats. Jopson catches the word sunrise on a question. </p><p>"Sunrise," he whispers, and thinks, what a strange thing that will be. "Perhaps the ice will shine."</p><p>"Perhaps it will melt." </p><p>Crozier turns in his bunk and his breath is deep and steady. Not wheezing and stalling like those nights when Jopson held a hand to his chest just to be assured of the burning life inside. He is squinting at Jopson again, not like in dreams but to see. </p><p>Jopson is not dismissed so he does not retreat. He has readied soap and razor beside the basin. "Allow me, sir. Before someone sees."</p><p>"We are quite unobserved," Crozier mumbles, shifting his arm under his head. "You've seen to that." His eyes blink shut again and he licks his dry mouth.</p><p>Jopson touches a clean corner of the rag to the captain's lips out of habit, wetting them like he would when Crozier would not wake for grog or water. "Not for much longer."</p>
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